Bruno Waterfield has been the Brussels correspondent for the Telegraph since 2007. He has been reporting on politics and European affairs for over 13 years, first from Westminster and then from Brussels since January 2003.

‘We already assume Britain has left the EU’

As far as some are concerned in Brussels, Britain has already left the EU.

Viviane Reding, the EU justice commissioner

Just back on the Brussels beat after the summer recess, I bumped into a high ranking official in the European Commission’s Berlaymont HQ earlier today.

“We don't include the UK in our plans anymore. We assume you're leaving the EU so don’t assume yourself we even bother thinking about British objections at the moment,” the official said. He was smiling but not joking.

This blueprint was set out in a speech – here – and assumes that democratic politics is insufficient (or even dangerous in of itself) to uphold freedoms or rights.

In the outlook of the EU, the state is the ultimate authority and must be able to override politicians if the officials, judges and other bureaucrats, decide “fundamental values” are being breached.

Never mind that European history tells us that the state is not the best guarantor of freedoms or that the “fundamental values” she talks about are highly caveated clauses on bits of paper.

The striking thing, the official told me, about the speech is that she wrote on the assumption that Britain would no longer be in the EU after a referendum in 2017.

Key to Mrs Reding’s grander vision of the EU as the saviour of democratic rights from on high is her call for the Charter of Fundamental Rights to be made binding on all member states and on all national legislation or administrative decisions.

She said:

“A very ambitious treaty amendment – which I would personally favour for the next round of treaty change – would be abolishing Article 51 of our Charter of Fundamental Rights, so as to make all fundamental rights directly applicable in the member states, including the right to effective judicial review (Article 47 of the Charter).

This would open up the possibility for the commission to bring infringement actions for violations of fundamental rights by Member States even if they are not acting in the implementation of EU law. I admit that this would be a very big federalising step. It took the United States more than 100 years until the first ten amendments started to be applied to the states by the Supreme Court."

Currently Britain has a protocol in the Lisbon EU treaty guaranteeing that the Charter will never be applicable in British courts (although it is in EU courts when applied to EU laws).

Britain would have a veto in the treaty change Mrs Reding is talking about and both Conservative and Labour politicians have made it abundantly clear that making the Charter applicable (which would overturn the anti-trade union legislation of the 80s) is a no go.

“She wasn’t even thinking of Britain. As far as she is concerned, you’ve left,” the official told me.

If the official is to be believed the federalist wing of EU officialdom, such as Mrs Reding, is already operating on the basis that Britain has left.